If it weren't for bad luck we'd have no luck at all

SIDELINE CUT:Pádraig Harrington's disqualification was news the battered and bruised citizens of Ireland could have done without, writes KEITH DUGGAN

IT’S A mad world, as the Tears for Fears boys used to lament, but at least golf is as priggish and old-school as ever. In an age of squandered billions, the ancient stick-and-ball game still fusses over millimetres and, indeed, dimples.

You may have been too fascinated and appalled by the Theatre of the Absurd in Leinster House to notice that yesterday Pádraig Harrington had been booted out of a golf game in Abu Dhabi because his hand accidentally grazed off his golf ball, causing it to move by a millimetre or two (at best). The Dubliner was aware that there had been contact but he believed the ball had “oscillated” rather than moved and so continued with his round.

He was informed yesterday morning that the incident had been reviewed and that there was no option but to scratch his name from the tournament sheet. Needless to say, the event was filmed, replayed on sports shows around the globe and uploaded on the web within hours. It isn’t the most dramatic or spellbinding moment of sport you are ever going to see, but it does hold its fascinations.

It confirms a few things: that for all the sunshine, there is something depressing and grim about those desert courses; that it is impossible to see Harrington playing without wanting him to do well, and that yes, indeed, you can clearly see (if you watch very, very carefully and in slow motion) Harrington’s hand glance off the ball as he retrieves the coin/marker thingy a tad carelessly.

Rather than elect to replace the ball and take a two-shot penalty, he played on.

To make matters worse, Harrington was in with a good chance of winning the thing. It was news the battered and bruised citizens of Ireland could have done without yesterday.

Emotions were high, tempers were frayed and all of that, and now an Irish man – one of our bone fide sporting heroes – was going through something of an inquisition in the heat and dust of the Middle East. It might well have called for an intervention from the Minister for Foreign Affairs – if only we had one.

But Harrington’s bad luck – which he accepted with the kind of grace His Holiness himself would struggle to replicate if he were called up on the golf course – highlights both the best and worst of golf. On the one hand, he broke the rules and the rules are there to be observed. Golf is one of the few sports in which the players referee themselves and it is something they take seriously.

This was Harrington’s second technical infraction in a luminous career: he was coasting in a tournament at the Belfry some years ago when he was disqualified for forgetting to sign his card after the first round three days earlier. He took his medicine with no complaints that day as well, even if most of the world believes it daft that someone should be expelled from a sporting contest for forgetting to write their name.

Golf prides itself on its etiquette and of the standard of fairness and sportsmanship it expects of its best players. And in doing so, it makes virtually all other sports look sort of shabby and low-life. In most sports, players pride themselves in getting away with it – in sneaking an offside goal, diving for a penalty, collapsing the scrum, crashing your F1 motor so your team-mate can win the race – as Renault did two years ago – throwing games in snooker, spread-betting in basketball: the list is endless.

But golf? Golf likes its stars to be saints. Just this week, Scotland’s Elliot Saltman took a three-month hit from the European Tour after being found guilty of “cheating”. To the uninitiated, the idea of cheating at golf might involve pointing at the sky and shouting “Aw no, that plane’s in trouble!” and then kicking the ball towards the flag while your partners scan the horizon for a plummeting, flaming jet.

But what Saltman did was “incorrectly place” the ball. In other words, he put his ball down maybe a half inch away from where it ought to have been. Not the kind of sin to guarantee you a long stint in Hell but enough to leave you in golfing Siberia.

While Pádraig was going through his travails this week, P Diddy was experiencing golf-related troubles of his own.

It turns out the rapper was “almost” mown down by a golf buggy being driven by the soul singer Adele P, demonstrating some of the reflexes he possibly had to employ during his formative, bullet-dodging days in Harlem, was forced to nimbly dive out of the way to avoid being knocked down and possibly killed by the speeding cart.

(Adele admitted that, excited at having seen the star, she hit the accelerator instead of the brake. It has happened to us all.)

Getting taken out by a golf cart would have been a terribly humiliating way for any self-respecting rapper to go, not least one as famous as P. But the thought of Diddy indulging in something as bourgeois as golf was pretty disturbing and disappointing in its own right.

But it turns out he nearly met his end in a studio lot, where Ms Adele had appropriated the golf cart. But he does hit a golf ball in his Bad Boy for Life video, exhibiting an agricultural but nonetheless smooth swing which suggests that, like most mega-rich types, he is no stranger to the course.

And this is the thing. Golf at its best may be played by upstanding men like Pádraig Harrington, who would not dream of overlooking the fact they had aided their ball’s progress of a two-mile course by a good dimple-and-a-half.

But golf, remember, is also a game pursued by charlatans and chancers the world over. Bernie Madoff played golf. In fact, he recruited most of the rich suckers who signed up to his notorious pyramid scheme on the exclusive fairways of the East Coast.

Didn’t Al Capone bury his machine guns at a golf club after the St Valentine’s Day massacre? Golf has plenty of skeletons in the closet.

And for that matter, doesn’t the current meltdown in Leinster House have its origins in the infamous golf game at Druids Glen in 2008?

Whether Biffo and Seánie were or weren’t talking about disappeared billions will remain a moot point, but it seems a safe bet they weren’t fussing over the dimples of a golf ball either.

Of course, 2008 seems like a long time ago now. Back then, Pádraig Harrington had just won the British Open title for the second year running; another splendid Irishman striding across the world stage.

That was then. It would have been nice to see someone like Harrington do something to make Ireland proud this week, even if it was just the Abu Dhabi Championship. Instead, his minute error was noticed not by himself or by course officials but by some guy watching on television who took it upon himself to phone up and complain.

It was probably José Manuel Barroso, still smarting over Joe Higgins and looking to get even.

But Harrington’s bad-luck tale confirmed that, right now, nothing touched by an Irish hand can catch a break.